


Nobody's Ed McMahon (good as it gets remix)

by phoebesmum



Category: Sports Night
Genre: M/M, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-10
Updated: 2010-05-10
Packaged: 2017-10-09 09:40:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/85810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoebesmum/pseuds/phoebesmum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dana has a grudge against NBC; Casey and Dan are none so keen themselves, but for quite another reason. Discussion, decision, sunshine and strawberries, not necessarily in that order.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nobody's Ed McMahon (good as it gets remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Laura](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laura/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Better Than Good](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/675) by luzdeestrellas. 



> Written May 2010 for RemixRedux 8: Magic 8-Ball from _Better Than Good_ by luzdeestrellas (http://luzdeestrellas.livejournal.com/136112.html). Many thanks to the lovely kmousie for her beta work, and for always lending me a shoulder in time of need.

"N," Dana says viciously.

Isaac looks at her.

"B," she adds and, finally, biting it off as she might a pesky strand of cotton, "C."

She's perched on Isaac's lawn glider, swinging herself back and forth with one foot. She's wearing a very big hat and a very small dress patterned with strawberries; there are more strawberries in a bowl on her lap, and a glass of wine in her hand. The contrast between her sunny appearance and the venom in her voice is so ludicrous that Isaac can't help but laugh.

Which is, of course, quite the wrong thing to do. She glares at him like an offended kitten.

"NBC!" she says again, all one word this time. "What do they want with NBC?"

Isaac is rather more concerned with what NBC wants with them, but he doesn't say so. Casey and Dan are grown men, and can take care of themselves. Probably.

"Isn't _Sports Night_ good enough for them any more?"

Isaac picks his words carefully. You have to, when faced with the minefield that is Dana's pride. Ever since he stepped down and she stepped up as Managing Editor, she's taken to treating _Sports Night_ as tenderly as though it were her first-born child. Rather more so, in fact, as Dana has been known to put her actual first-born child down somewhere and forget where she left him. Isaac knows better than to mention this, either.

"They've been with the show a long time, Dana. Maybe it's time to move on."

Maybe they're tired of always being in third place. Maybe they're tired of never winning the share of the viewing figures that their writing and presentation deserve. Maybe they're tired of missing out on awards, kudos, fame, fortune, glory. If they are, he can't blame them. In some ways he's amazed that they've stuck around as long as they have. God knows, there'd been times when he was amazed that _he_ still stuck around, and nobody, not Dana, not anyone, cared about _Sports Night_ more than he did.

"_I've_ been with the show a long time!" It's a childish wail, which Isaac doubts was the intended effect, so he lets it slide.

"And you moved on," he points out instead, inarguably.

She argues anyway. "I didn't go _far!_"

Literally, that's true: she'd just moved down the hallway. Figuratively … well, figuratively, that's another matter. Dana Whitaker has come a long, long way for a woman in sports, for a woman in television. For a woman.

It's the 21st century, and those barriers remain firmly in place. There's still a lot of work to be done. That's one reason he finally decided to retire, to work from home, to concentrate on politics. The other reason … he glares down at the wheelchair that confines his body, if not his mind, and refuses to give it the importance it so clearly thinks it merits.

"Dana." He tries reason, although he knows how far that's likely to get him. "You know Danny's getting bored."

"He still loves sports!"

"He does, but don't tell me you haven't noticed that it takes a whip and a chair to keep him away from politics these days." No need to tell Dana that Dan's been writing articles for Isaac's weblog for the past year and a half. If she ever bothered to read the thing, she'd know. "And Casey …"

"Casey?"

Casey's another matter entirely. Who knows what Casey wants? Isaac never has. Sometimes he thinks that Casey doesn't know himself. Other times he's sure of it. For one thing, Isaac is pretty sure that Casey wants Dan and always has done, and that the feeling is mutual, but neither of them's ever done a single thing about it – to Isaac's knowledge, that is. And Isaac would know. Trust him. He'd know.

Which is just one more reason why NBC might not be such a good fit for them. And is also yet one more thing that Isaac doesn't say aloud.

"It's only an interview," he says instead, temporising. He hates that, but sometimes it's the best way. Save the impassioned speeches for the internet; in person, exercise all the diplomacy you have at your command. "Why don't we wait and see what happens?"

Dana doesn't seem impressed.

"It's Dan and Casey," he reminds her. "Don't you think we ought to trust them by now?"

Her only response is an unladylike grunt, and she buries her nose in her wineglass. Fair enough. When it comes to Dan and Casey, you never can tell what weird, strange and wonderfully random thing they might take it into their heads to do next.

"This is a beautiful day," Isaac observes, apropos of nothing in particular. And it's true: a cloudless blue sky, the lawn neatly mown, all the flowers in bloom, Esther and Ellie in the conservatory, working on their respective laptops to edit and send his latest updates to the internet – it takes a village, apparently, to raise a political blog – his grandson due for a visit, and the house carefully toddler-proofed in advance. Life, in general, is good. Dan and Casey will do whatever they're going to do, and the world won't crumble as a result.

Not even a little bit.

Dana brings the bottle over, refills his glass. That'll be his limit, otherwise his medication will go haywire. Not, so far as he's observed, that it makes much difference. He's still old, and he doesn't see that changing any time soon. That's why he's making the most of every minute he might still have. That's why he's stopped worrying his head over stuff that, in any case, is none of his business, and saves his strength for the things that really matter.

Dana is not yet old enough to have learned that lesson. "This can't end well," she mutters as she settles back down again and resumes her rocking.

_It seldom does_, Isaac thinks, but all he does is smile. Inscrutably, or so he hopes.

"We'll see," he says.

***

"Well," Dan says brightly, "I think that went well."

Casey looks at him, slanted, sidelong. Dan grins at him and slurps up soda through his drinking straw.

For a big-time network in a big, shiny building, NBC had crappy facilities. The two of them had been stuck in a small, stuffy, antiquated elevator for what had seemed like hours (actually twenty minutes, but time is, after all, relative) and, although they'd used the time wisely and well, it was not an experience Casey would care to repeat.

Not the 'stuck in an elevator' part, that is. There may or may not have been kissing involved (which might or might not have been caught on security footage; that's only just occurred to him. Oh. Oh, well), and that – well, that was an experiment, and he's happy to run it again to check his findings any old time of the day or night.

They'd escaped eventually, obviously – it was either that or find their desiccated corpses a hundred years hence, locked in a final desperate, skeletal embrace – and had been disgorged onto the 47th floor in a flurry of apologies from both sides, for tardiness on theirs and for the inconvenience on the other, and to offers of coffee and water and bagels, all of which they'd declined politely. Then it was into an inner sanctum, where a big guy in a very nice suit – Ted, Casey thought his name was, or maybe Jeff – was waiting, along with a slew of littler guys, the niceness of whose suits no doubt reflected their respective places in the pecking order, all of whom were very pleased to meet them, glad they could take the time, they were all big fans, big, big fans, no, really, _big_ fans …

(Casey wondered whether any one of them would be able to tell him what he'd led with in last night's broadcast. Wondered too whether any of them had noticed that Danny's suit, which was his own and handmade by his grandfather's tailor, was the nicest of the lot.)

They were a little pressed for time, Jeff (or maybe Ted) said, and, once again, he couldn't apologise enough for that, so they'd cut straight to the chase: he was sure Casey and Dan knew themselves just how good they were, what with their sharp writing and their attractive on-screen personas and all –

(Exactly how were you supposed to respond to that?, Casey wondered. It would be rude to disagree, but, on the other hand, "Yes, I watch myself on TV all the time and I think I'm pretty freakin' fabulous," sounded conceited in the extreme, true though it might be.)

"Fresh," one of the littler suits chimed in, and "Invigorating," added another.

"And we also disperse disagreeable odours," Dan added helpfully. There was a moment's frozen silence, and then everyone laughed. Oh, how they laughed!

"That's what I'm talking about!" said Ted – or Jeff – and all of the lesser suits nodded their agreement. You could've harnessed them up to a wind generator and the building would've powered itself. Possibly more efficiently than at its present level.

"It's that mixture," Ted – Jeff …

"What was that guy's name?" Casey asks Dan, who's now making disgusting bubbling noises with his straw as he tries to vacuum up the very last of his soda. _Good suction_, Casey thinks, then derails that train of thought hurriedly before it can carry him off down the road less travelled.

"M'm?" Dan's concentrating hard on the job in hand. "Which guy?" Then he looks up. "Oh, _that_ guy. Don," he says, and returns to chasing down that last, elusive little drop.

Don. Huh.

"It's that mixture," Don had said. "You're dedicated – you're knowledgeable – but at the same time you're bright, you're irreverent, you're hip – "

(Casey is nearly forty, Dan not that many years behind, and had on his very best day never ventured to consider himself 'hip' but, if people want to tell him good things about himself, who is he to stop them?)

" – and that's why we think you'd be such a good addition to our team."

Suddenly the room is very quiet. Just a lot of low-level executives breathing which, really, is a waste of good air.

_Team?_

"'Team'?" Dan echoes, and he smiles, showing all his teeth.

And that, bar the final round of 'thanks for your time, we'll call you's, was all she wrote.

"We'd've been going down a step anyway," Dan had remarked as they'd waited, in some trepidation, for the down elevator.

"No kidding." Casey had been bitter. Bitter, and disappointed. Forty years old, and they want him as a fucking _sidekick?!_

"But a fresh, invigorating sidekick," Dan says now. Casey hadn't realised he was speaking aloud. "Like we're manufactured by Glade, or something."

"Johnson &amp; Johnson," Casey offers.

"Airwick." And that's the limit of their knowledge of air freshening products, so that's where that exchange stops.

All Dan had been trying to do was point out the sign for the 47th floor as if it was symbolic, this office being on a lower storey than their own. Casey didn't think symbolism had anything to do with it, it was just happenstance, but he was also well aware that Dan was as brought down by the interview as he was, maybe even more so, so he'd smiled at the attempt at humour, no matter how lame. And then the elevator had arrived, and they'd both eyed it dubiously. Dan had nodded to the emergency stairs and said, "You want to walk?" and Casey had looked again at the sign that said '47' and said "No," and so they had stepped inside, and ridden all the way down to the first floor, quickly, comfortably and without incident – or, for the record, further kissing – had signed out at the desk and relinquished their visitors' passes, and then had stood outside on the street, New York City hustling noisy and impervious about its own business, heedless of their disappointment – not that they had wanted the job, but even so – and had wondered what to do next.

And whether they should talk about … you know. The other thing.

Because Casey doesn't know what sort of experience Danny has in these matters, nor with whom, and nor does he really want to know except for where he really, really does, but he himself is forty years old (it's a lot on his mind today, it seems) and, while you can teach an old dog new tricks, he's done it himself – Samson; damn, now, that was a _dog_ – it does take some time, and there is a long, long way between a first kiss, no matter how overdue, and … you know. The rest of it.

For crying out loud, he doesn't even know where second base would be when it's another guy. For all he knows he might already have been there without realising it.

"Food," he'd eventually said, and Dan had nodded. Danny can always eat. He should be twice the size he is, but he just seems to absorb everything he ingests. Nervous energy, Casey supposes. Casey himself has to eat pretty much continually, otherwise he gets light-headed and woozy, so at least (he thinks) they'll have that much in common to see them through their silver years, there'll be a daily trawl through the supermarket to look forward to.

"There's an Indian place two blocks over," Dan had suggested. Casey had shuddered.

"Curry?"

He didn't see the eyeroll, but, somehow, he heard it. "There's more to Indian food than – "

"Not for _lunch_," he'd practically begged, and Dan had huffed out a sigh.

"Okay. We'll find you a nice, safe, all-American diner, and you can get a hotdog and a root beer float."

_... trawling through the supermarket, squabbling at the deli counter, Dan taking the processed food away from me as fast as I can grab it, me reading the labels on the weird stuff he picks up and asking "What the hell is that?! …_

In spite of which, a diner actually sounded quite attractive. "I haven't had a root beer float in – god. Twenty years?" Casey had said, sounding faintly wistful even to his own ears.

"Me either," Dan said, and tucked his hand under Casey's elbow. "C'mon, Slugger. Let's go seek out the American dream."

Which is another of Dan's many talents: his fabled New York Renaissance had served him well, and he always knows exactly where he is in relation to exactly where he needs to be. Casey would have sworn that there was not a place like this left on earth, but, apparently, it's 'retro' (whatever that means), and it boasts a fake railway car frontage, poodle-skirted waitresses on roller skates, their frontage equally impressive and, probably, equally fake, forty flavours of ice cream, and enough fried food that Casey could feel his arteries hardening as he stepped over the threshold.

That's the very last drop of a root beer float that's slurping its way up Dan's drinking straw at this very moment. As the sound dies away they seem to slip into a bubble of absolute silence, the jukebox and the noise of the lunchtime crowd alike fading into the distance of a world quite apart from their own.

"So," Dan eventually says, very quietly, very soberly, "Where do we go from here?"

Casey so doesn't want to have this conversation. "Back to the office? We still have a show to write. A show of our own," he adds, and shudders once more at their narrow escape.

"Yeah," Dan says, more quietly yet. "And after that?"

Casey takes a deep breath. "We need to talk," he says, what the cowards always say, and, a moment later, could kick himself as he sees the light in Dan's eyes fade and dim. "Not like that!" he says, quickly, urgently, and, in the heat of the moment, of needing to fix what he'd almost broken before the cracks have begun to spread, he reaches out and lays his hand over Dan's, not even thinking to check around first to see who might be watching. "I don't know what we're doing, Danny. I don't know what we're going to do, where we're going to go. I think we've gone as far as we can with _Sports Night_ and we both need something new, and we both know that playing second fiddle at NBC isn't going to cut it. Maybe it's time to move on. Maybe you can write your book, maybe I can find myself a show that needs a good-looking frontman with no baggage attached." He squeezes Dan's hand as he speaks, to let him know he's kidding. "Maybe one of us will win the Lottery this week, and we can both go south and lie on a big sandy beach for the rest of our lives. All I know is that, whatever it is, we'll do it together. Always, Danny. I can't do it without you."

He has to stop then. He's running out of breath and, maybe it's the scent of frying onions that permeates the atmosphere, but something is making his eyes sting like crazy. He has one hand free, and he swipes it quickly across his face, trusting to god that nobody will see it and think that he, Casey McCall, is so overcome by emotion that he's _crying_.

'Cause that'll happen.

Dan looks down at their two hands together, and the corner of his mouth curves into a smile.

"You assume," he says, "That if I won the Lottery, I'd share with you."

Casey has to clear his throat to respond. "You wouldn't?"

"I still get all those begging letters, you know. Someday I'd like to assuage my conscience."

"Uh-huh," Casey says. "Come to that, if _I_ won the Lottery, Lisa would find a way to bleed it away from me. And then she'd spend it on shoes."

"I could spend it on shoes too," Dan muses, glancing down at the bespoke Oxford brogues that he wears for special occasions. "Jimmy Choo's not just for girls, you know."

"He's not?"

Dan shrugs. "Well, truthfully, he is, but I'm sure he could whip up something in a size 10. For a price. I hate the beach, anyway," he adds, before Casey has time to be disturbed by this image, and Casey is duly distracted.

"Me too. I burn. We could buy you a new boat?"

Dan considers this. "Nah," he finally decides. "I like the boat I have. I'd like her even better if I had the time to see her occasionally. And I might even manage to get you aboard, after all these years."

Casey shakes his head. "Not gonna happen."

"I have my ways," Dan assures him. "I can bend you to my will." Then he sighs. "So. What're we gonna tell Dana?"

Casey squeezes his hand again, then lets go, waves for the check. He's kind of looking forward to being bent to Danny's will. It sounds like fun.

It's time they had some fun in their lives. It's time for a lot of things. It's time, most of all, it's time for _them_.

"Just tell her – " he says.

***

"That seems to happen to you a _lot_," Dana says, not without sarcasm, and she snaps her cellphone closed.

"Apparently they got stuck in an elevator," she informs Isaac, but is met with nothing more than a gentle snore. She looks over, sees he's peacefully sleeping; pushes herself off the swing, goes over, tucks the rug more securely around his chest. It's a warm day, but he's an old man, and you can't be too careful.

Her wineglass is empty, and the strawberries are all gone. Dana dusts down her dress, straightens her hat and her sunglasses, unlocks the brake of Isaac's wheelchair and steers the two of them back toward the house.

Her boys are still _her_ boys, at least today and probably tomorrow too. It's a beautiful day, and all is right with the world.

This is as good as it gets.

***


End file.
